I first learned about “the odd effectiveness” of affirmations from Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert.

Scott said, “All you do is pick a goal and you write it down 15 times a day in some specific sentence form, like, ‘I, Scott Adams, will become an astronaut.”

Then your goal is supposed to manifest itself into existence.

Scott tested it on a stock play, which ended up working out. Next, he set his sights on the New York Times Bestseller list, which also manifested itself.

Good enough for me!

I started with my first mantra:

I, Austin Belcak, will make $100,000.

Then the next:

I, Austin Belcak, will be featured in Forbes.

And the next:

I, Austin Belcak, will have 100,000 followers on LinkedIn.

All three of those things came true, but something funny happened.

They didn’t make me any happier.

In the moment? Absolutely.

But they didn’t scratch that deeper itch of true, genuine fulfillment.

With every step up, there seemed to be a new set of goals, a new north star to point to, a new group of “peers” to compare myself against.

Unfortunately, it took me far too long to realize what was going on.

I kept up the cycle of “More” for years.

And even now, with that realization, I’m still susceptible to negative feelings of “enoughness” and comparison. They show up regularly.

I acknowledge and make space for them, but I also fight back.

Instead of fueling them with my mantra, I rewrote it to disarm them. Now it reads:

I, Austin Belcak, run a business that makes me insanely happy and fulfilled.